Kernel module inactive by default?

2009-07-23 Thread Hans-J. Ullrich
Hi all, 

I discovered a strange behaviour since some time. Maybe someone can explain 
it:

I am running an Acer Crystal Eye Cam ( 5986:0102  
Acer Crystal Eye webcam), and the cam is running fine (driver is uvcvideo). 
Lucview is working, and kopete shows video, when I am in the settings menu. 

But I am wondering, why the driver is always incative (green led is off), when 
I am not running any application, which it is directly accessing (like xawtv, 
kopete or whatever)?

Whenever I am starting one of these applications, the green led is on, I get a 
picture/video, but when I leave it, the green led gets off. This means for me: 
The driver is now inactive! In the past, I could never see this behaviour, the 
green led was always on.

Might this be the reason, why camorama, kdetv or other video-applications 
cannot access to /dev/videoX ?

The access rights are of course set correctly, running as root gets no success 
either.  

So, is this normal? If yes, why? If not, how can I fix it?

This is the output of lsmod:

v4l1_compat12932  2 uvcvideo,videodev
v4l2_compat_ioctl32 9296  1 videodev

Thank you for any information.

Regards

Hans


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Re: Kernel module inactive by default?

2009-07-23 Thread Lennart Sorensen
On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 06:23:38PM +0200, Hans-J. Ullrich wrote:
 I discovered a strange behaviour since some time. Maybe someone can explain 
 it:
 
 I am running an Acer Crystal Eye Cam ( 5986:0102  
 Acer Crystal Eye webcam), and the cam is running fine (driver is uvcvideo). 
 Lucview is working, and kopete shows video, when I am in the settings menu. 
 
 But I am wondering, why the driver is always incative (green led is off), 
 when 
 I am not running any application, which it is directly accessing (like xawtv, 
 kopete or whatever)?
 
 Whenever I am starting one of these applications, the green led is on, I get 
 a 
 picture/video, but when I leave it, the green led gets off. This means for 
 me: 
 The driver is now inactive! In the past, I could never see this behaviour, 
 the 
 green led was always on.
 
 Might this be the reason, why camorama, kdetv or other video-applications 
 cannot access to /dev/videoX ?
 
 The access rights are of course set correctly, running as root gets no 
 success 
 either.  
 
 So, is this normal? If yes, why? If not, how can I fix it?
 
 This is the output of lsmod:
 
 v4l1_compat12932  2 uvcvideo,videodev
 v4l2_compat_ioctl32 9296  1 videodev
 
 Thank you for any information.

It is normal for a webcam to have a light that indicates when it is
transfering video data.  That way you can easily tell when the camera
is recording and when it is off.  Helps make sure you don't have spyware
recording you without your knowledge I suppose.

If no application is reading data from the camera, then there is no
reason for the camera to send any so it has no reason to be on, so the
camera can be off and the light would then be off too.

-- 
Len Sorensen


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